Why the Bengals Are the Worst Under-Center Offense in Football

The Bengals went under center more this year to buy play-action shots. Four games in, it's 3.3 yards a play from under center, last in the NFL, on 54 percent more snaps than last year.

The same offense from the shotgun is top ten. Burrow from the gun is the fourth-best thrower in football since 2024, behind Allen, Jackson and Purdy. On first and 10 they get 7.4 yards a play from the shotgun and 3.1 from under center. Same eleven players.

So the question isn't whether the package is broken. It's why, and whether it fixes itself.

The number they were chasing was Joe Flacco's

Last year the Bengals averaged about 5 yards a play under center, which is why the offseason plan existed. Split it by quarterback and it falls apart.

Flacco, a 40-year-old who has spent his life under center, took seven weeks of snaps and averaged 7.5 yards a play from there. Chase Brown ran for 7.1 a carry behind his play fakes. Every Burrow stretch since 2024 sits between 2.3 and 4.1. The plan didn't start at 5 and fall to 3.3. It started from a Flacco mirage and landed where Burrow's recent history said it would.

The run half is the line, and the calls make it worse

Chase Brown is at 3.4 a carry from under center and gets stopped at the line on 23 percent of his runs. League average is 18. Nine carries aimed outside the tackles have gained seven yards. That's a blocking number, not a running back number: in the last six weeks of 2025, with Burrow under center, Brown ran 42 times for 4.7 a carry and was stuffed on 5 percent of them. Same back, same alignment, something in front of him changed.

Then the play calling turns a blocking problem into a tell. The Bengals run on 38 percent of first-and-10 snaps; the league runs on 53. Almost every under-center snap is first down, and 73 percent of them are runs. A defense that reads "run" from the alignment gets to play the gap runs it is already winning.

The pass half is design, and it's three years old

Burrow was good under center. From 2020 to 2023 he averaged 7.1 yards a throw from there, better than his shotgun numbers in the same years. Then 2024 happened.

Since 2024 he's the worst under-center passer in the league, minus 0.31 expected points a throw, on 80 attempts. Of the 35 quarterbacks with 60-plus under-center throws in that span, 26 are better under center than from the gun. Burrow is last by a gap twice as wide as anyone else's.

Because it started in 2024, it's not a Burrow problem. It's what the package asks of him.

From the gun, 39 percent of his throws travel 6 to 19 yards and that throw is worth plus 0.66 points every time. It's the best throw in football and the reason he's a top-five quarterback. Under center, it barely exists: 16 of those throws in three seasons. Seven in ten under-center passes are five yards or less. A play fake and a checkdown.

They took a quarterback whose superpower is the intermediate throw and built him a package with no intermediate throws in it. This year's deep shots are 1 for 4, and the one was overturned on review.

Where it goes from here

The run game will fix itself. Every team since 2015 that was this bad under center through four weeks, all 19, got better, from 3.0 yards a play to 5.1 the rest of the way. A 23 percent stuff rate regresses.

The passing package won't, because its problem is design. None of those 19 teams were three seasons into a package worse than every other quarterback's.

Fix the edge blocking. Then put the 6-to-19 yard throw back into the under-center game, the way it was there from 2020 to 2023, or stop throwing from under center. Burrow said it after the Jaguars game: let's throw it more.

Sure. From the gun.

Numbers from NFL play-by-play through Week 4 of 2026, history to 2015. Under center means not in the shotgun, kneels and spikes removed. Quarterback split: 60-plus under-center and 200-plus shotgun attempts since 2024. Build your own chart at sticktothemodel.com/charting.